Kelly Salasin

All Souls Day, 2008

After spending the past six months “on hold” while the Universe dilly-dallied around our needs, I’m taking a decidedly religious approach to my husband’s extended unemployment.

I’m uncertain as to whether this tack indicates a regression or progression in my spiritual development. Results will tell or perhaps desperate times simply demand desperate measures.

In the meantime, I’ve dusted off my late grandmother’s statue of the Blessed Virgin and unearthed the “Hail Mary’s” recited at my Catholic high school. And although I can’t remember exactly how to use them, I’ve unpacked the rosary beads passed down by my husband’s Polish grandmother.

I’ve also taken to dusting off all the dead relatives– the photos of them that is. I’ve lined them up on the shelf above the stairway as a place of honor to beseech them for any assistance they might lend from the other side.

My bedroom “altar” beholds a potluck of devotion: tall strawberry-blonde Mary draped in blue robes towers over my peacefully seated, full-bodied goddess, Kuan Yin, purchased at the Food Co-op. On the other side is a sculpture of a woman in a bathtub, reminding me of the divine act of self-nurturing.

I’m not above adding a lucky rabbit’s foot although I imagine that is no longer PC. I’ve re-opened my late mother’s Contact Your Angel guide insisting my husband meditate with the angel of his choice.

We’ve made it this far without bellying up, but yesterday we had to face the reality that a job that pays our bills in the way we’re used to paying them may not be coming. We’ve  buckled down and began the daunting task of whittling down a budget that had just begun to get some breathing room.

Things are about to get a lot harder… that is unless Mother Mary and the dead relatives have something to say about it.

Until then,

“Hail Mary, full of grace…”

(authors note: My husband did get a job– 3 months later.  He still has it.)